A new life; same as the old life?

We started 2007 with one of the warmest winters on record, not much snow and very mild. The plus to this was playing winter golf in Chicagoland, the downside being that we were looking forward to experiencing some "hard winters". Like the previous year, one of our sporting team were playing at the top of their sport. The Bears made the Superbowl, only to lose, but hey they made it right. We didn't know it at the time, but we were also on the way to our first child, conceived on or around Christmas day! In February the weather got colder, still not much snow, but the temperature was dropping so much sand was freezing! Oswego county in NY state was getting feet upon feet of snow, and we got a new car. The HHR, always intended to be Lorraine's car, in preparation for our baby producing efforts was an excellent find and an excellent deal. We knew we were expecting our baby, but hadn't told anyone yet, except the future grandparents. Late in March we went public, and

I don't know how one gets to the top of such lists, when there are soooo many sites out there on that world wide web thingy, but recently I have been seeing a lot of hits for three specific items.. 1. The Hippo Christmas Song 2. A Soldier's Silent Night 3. Slainte Mhath (Slancha Va) Nobody comes to see me anymore, it seems either AJ, or one of these top three items are the most popular!

The weather has been pretty wild over the last few weeks with some pretty big storms rolling through. One have had two ice storms, the first of which had all melted before I could get the camera out next day, it was crazy with my whole truck coated with ice, really wish I had some pictures! We had around 9" of snow in one storm, that was excellent and a lot of it is still around. The last week or so has been lots of freezing rain, sleet and snow, not much fun. This picture is from an ice storm we had at the weekend. Every branch, leave, bud and stick of every tree was coated in ice, it looks really cool. Not sure what else the season has in store for us, but hopefully more of the same, it's fun for us truck drivers. Lorraine's family will be in town for Christmas, so hopefully there will be a white Christmas.

Most of my UK friends will think this corny and most of my US friends will have either done it before, or will in their future. I am talking about the family Christmas card. In future, ours will be way more professional. I refuse to pay someone to do it, but I might try the old "green screen" approach, and get some compilation pictures going, but we will see. Anyways for now, here are some pictures from this year's shoot. Sorry they are a bit split up, but I filed them differently, so there are two links below. AJ & Reggie , Just Reggie

My friends who know me well, will also know that I love Christmas and specifically Christmas films and music (Charlie - remember A Country Christmas!) So when Lorraine got an email from a township an hour away to come and see their Christmas light show, set to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I was there with bells on! Some of you may remember the guy who did this with his house a few years ago. Well they asked him to do this for their tree. I have a couple of videos below, that we shot in the freezing cold watching the results of his endeavours.

If you have been reading for a while you will know that AJ and bathtime didn't mix in the early days. Being my first, I still don't know if that was normal, or she was just fussy. It doesn't really matter now, because quite honestly she now loves the bath, and doesn't even mind water in her face..too much! As you can see, I have been playing with the Camcorder and shot some videos of her last night. AJ In The Bath : AJ& The Duck : AJ's Bathtime